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Prometheus was the god who brought everything to humankind that they needed to develop; fire, knowledge and with that came technology and innovation. They were known to be the author of human art and science and they still resided among mankind to supervise that only good was done with their gifts.
Their life - now taking place on earth - required a new name. The tale of Prometheus was well-known to the people and questions would occur if they kept on using their name. Refusing to leave all of their godly side behind, they chose a special name, still. From now on, they went by Dream.
Due to their ancient views and perspectives, they loathed living in the city which developed much faster than Dream’s beliefs did. They wanted to lead a simple life and choose to settle down in the woods. Well, settling down might be misleading; due to being a god, Dream never slept and just strode through the forest day and night.
One day, Dream stumbled across a small hut in the woods. At first, they thought it was abandoned. Why would anyone live out here when life in the city was far more comfortable. Dream approached the hut, smelling the suffocating smoke that was coming out of its fireplace. The fire must have been lit just recently, otherwise, the smell would have spread more already. Now, hanging above Dream’s head in a cloud of dark grey, it overshadowed the otherwise fresh smell of the forest around.
It was the time of the year that Dream grew to love since being on earth. They could feel the energy that the young, light-green leaves radiated and the colourful petals of thousand different flowers and plants sent a wave of serotonin through Dream whenever their eyes caught them in between blades of grass.
Dream's favourite flowers were roses. They found them rarely on their walks in the forest but every time they saw a bush, they were mesmerized. Then, they stood, staring for a while. It was daring to touch them but Dream always decided against it. They didn't want to colour the stem and leaves in the same colour as the petals, as red as blood.
In some way, roses reminded Dream of themself. They were told the same thing once, many aeons ago.
Roses were beautiful and they lit up the whole room if you placed them visibly. Some were mesmerized by the atmosphere they created, stopping in their tracks whenever they saw them - as Dream did. Others ignored them.
You were dared to touch because of their beauty but if you did let your fingers grace over them, you might end up hurt.
Roses let you strive to be who you want, to show your inner potential and match their outstanding beauty.
Dream tend to have that effect on others, too. The gift they brought to humankind was unmatched and its impact was heavy. Some humans strived to use the new skill in every way possible. They did research, they discovered and they improved. All because Dream, Prometheus, gifted them the most precious and outstanding present.
The hut stood there in silence, looking like it had been unused for years. While seemingly not being occupied it had gotten overgrown by Tilias and blue evergreens surrounded the wooden walls. Dream crouched, gracing the dark blue, near purple petals with their index finger. The flowers were blue Rhododendrons and Dream loved them. They took an interest in flowers while living in the forest, just because there were not many other things they could occupy their mind with. It was a complex enough topic to invest hours of their day into and plants weren’t a thing that came naturally to them. But it interested Dream and they were willing to spend hours upon hours to study the meaning of flowers and trees. After they had learned about their looks, requirements and meaning, they looked for them wandering around the forest, trying to scout the plants they were so desperately looking for.
The hut had small windows in its wooden walls, they weren’t of high quality; just carved out of the wooden planks the hut was made out of. There were no glass panels inside, nothing covering the holes, nothing stopping the wind from blowing right through the small inside.
Dream wondered if it was comfortable to sleep in there. In the night, when the wind rustles through the trees as well as through the room, it must be scary and cold.
Dream wanted to inspect the small building further but with their overly good hearing - another feature that stuck around after deciding to spend their life on earth - they heard footsteps in the distance. They were too heavy and too clumsily placed to be the sounds of an animal, it had to be a human. Now that Dream focused more on their hearing, they could also make out a faint humming. At first, they mistook it for the melodic whistling of the small, new-forming leaves that danced in the blow of the wind but as they concentrated more they were almost certain that the person coming towards the hut must be singing to themself.
Dream sought shelter in the nearby bushes, hoping that they made the entrance out correctly and being able to avoid a confrontation with the foreign human. The leaves tickled their neck and they so desperately wanted to move out of their hideout but Dream couldn’t risk being seen. A human would never understand who they were nor why they were wandering through the forest day and night and not settling down. It was too much to explain and even if they would listen to Dream they still wouldn’t understand it, probably.
The humming had stopped but the steps of the stranger got quicker, the nearer they came to the hut. They were glad to be back home, most likely and tired from a day in the forest. Earlier, when they were on a clearing, Dream had seen that the day was coming to an end and now it was approximately two hours later, even. The time was hard to tell because the leaves had already formed an opaque roof this time of the year. One had no chance to find out the position of the sun through it and correlate the time of day.
Not having a sleep schedule made the problem even worse for Dream. They didn’t sleep and they led their everyday life unattached from time. Thus, they didn’t have the phenomenon of the “inner clock” that humans so desperately needed to function in their planned and ordinary lives.
When Dream heard the door closing behind the human, they began to carefully move out of their hideout. They let out a breath of relief when they didn’t have to suppress their laughter any longer that was previously caused by the branches tickling their neck with their leaves. Dream didn’t want to risk moving too much, yet. From what they had gathered about humans so far while living on earth, they stayed up for a little while longer after coming home. They ate so much Dream had picked up over the years. Another thing they couldn’t understand because they simply never had to eat.
Now, Dream was able to tell the time, too. The sun definitely disappeared behind the horizon and had been gone for a while by now. It has gotten a lot colder already, even though it was always relatively cool in the woods. Dream had found the temperature swings, especially the heat, a significant factor in deciding on a life in the forest. In the Olympus temperature never shifted therefore it was an unknown phenomenon for Prometheus to suddenly adjust to different temperatures.
In the woods, the temperature was humid most of the time. When it got too hot, Dream had discovered the technique of spending the hours of the day near running water. In the woods, there were multiple small creeks and on a multiple-day long walk, Dream had found a bigger one - nearly a river - that carried so much water that they were able to swim in it. Now, having the route to it memorized, they visited it every few weeks to relax for some time and wash the exhaust of multiple days on their feet off of their skin.
Losing themself in their own mind, Dream never had noticed that the torch that had illuminated the hut beforehand wasn’t lighting up the inside anymore. They didn’t know for how long the foreign human had been in bed, but they guessed that it was safe to go. It was unlikely that the stranger would be able to make out Dream when they sneaked in front of the windows unless the human had well-trained eyesight. If the human had fallen into a state of unconsciousness by now, Dream didn’t need to worry about making too much noise either.
So Dream sneaked by the windows. They found themself doing a pretty good job, not stepping on a branch that would make a loud sound, setting their feet only on the grass. The green below their feet was damp by now, dew setting on it. It came from the nearby stream, finding its way over the ground in a white, foggy layer. It was truly mesmerizing and Dream got pulled in to watch the mystic unfold. The fog wrapped around their ankles as it did around the plants surrounding the shore and the hut.
“HEY!”
Dream shrank. Either they hadn’t been as quiet as they thought they were or the foreign human hadn’t been asleep yet. Slowly, they turned. Dream expected the human to stand there in a defensive posture, maybe even a plank or pot in hand to defend himself.
The boy in front of them definitely didn’t meet their expectations. He blew all of them away.
Dream’s head was empty. They wanted to defend themself, their actions, since they were roaming the human’s place and by now he must have realized that, too. No matter if his mind was blurred from (nearly) falling asleep.
“What the fuck are you doing sneaking around my place?”
Dream wouldn’t get out of this situation if there wasn’t an excuse in their mind in a matter of seconds. They needed a believable lie. Now.
“Hey, I am Dream.” It was dumb to ignore the question they had been asked, Dream knew that. But there was still a little bit of hope left inside of them that if they actually had a chat with the human, he would forget that Dream wasn’t supposed to be there.
The brown-haired boy didn’t look amused. In fact, he looked furious.
“No offence to you but I really do not care who the fuck you are. I simply want you to get away from my home so I can finally get some rest.”
The human looked exhausted, Dream realized just now. Immediately, they felt terrible. In the back of their mind, there has been a small voice telling them the whole time that what they were doing was wrong. They just decided to ignore it.
Dream was pulled in by the way the human had leaned his forearm on the windowsill, hunched forward and nearly falling asleep standing. They shouldn’t find him attractive, after all, the person in front of them was a human and Dream, Dream was a god. Dream was Prometheus. They couldn’t love a human. They weren’t allowed to do so.
“I am Dream. And I am terribly sorry to disturb your sleep. I will leave you alone and let you get some rest. I really didn’t mean to bother you. I was just strolling by and was mesmerized by the flowers around here. They truly are beautiful -”
Dream rambled when they got nervous. They knew they tended to do this. But the boy in front of them was just gorgeous and even though Prometheus had seen pretty people - gods but humans too - they had never met one this pretty.
A chuckle stopped Dream from rambling, though. The boy in the window had straightened his posture and was watching the god as insistent as Dream had watched the human before. There was something in the air, maybe it was the weight of the night finally settling on both of their shoulders, maybe it was the slight tension between them.
“Dream, Dream, Dream”, the human tested how well the name left his throat, cut through his vocal cords and rolled over his tongue. A melody planted itself inside Dream’s head, spinning around the way the human’s mouth had formed his name, an accent prominent in his voice.
“Dream is an unusual name, if I may say so. But it’s beautiful nonetheless.”
Heat rose to Dream’s cheeks tinting them a rosy colour and letting their green eyes shine even more. The beautiful and adorable human just complimented them when it should be Dream that lavished the other one with compliments. Dream wanted to step closer to the human, they wanted to run their hands through the brown hair, caress the pale forehead and press a kiss to the tinted apples of his cheeks.
“What’s your name, beautiful?”
Dream took a step towards the human. They wanted to inspect the foreigner more, the dim lights made it hard to make out his features. The torch inside the hut was lit again, the boy must have illuminated it when he heard someone sneaking around outside his house.
“Name’s George.”
The sleep deprivation was clear in George’s voice and his sentence was followed by a yawn. Dream wanted to reach out, pull him towards their chest and tuck him into bed so George wouldn’t have to stand on his feet any longer. The things the human made them feel were unreal and it made Dream doubt themself. The gravitation they felt made them doubt all the things they were taught and all the thníngs that they had told themself in the time they were living on earth.
Why wouldn’t a relationship between a god living on earth and a human work out? Why didn’t they and George get a chance?
Dream couldn’t get the doubts out of their head and there was the voice of Zeus in their head, telling them to never get too close to a human. To never give mankind the opportunity to hurt them because Zeus was certain they wouldn’t hesitate to use violence against a god. Against someone that was so much stronger than them and who could easily wipe out all the humans on the face of the earth.
“I think it would be better if I got on my way no. Wouldn’t want to keep you from sleeping any longer. You look tired.”
Dream took a step back from the human, from George. The voices in their head got louder and louder by the second, telling them that they made the right decision. They imagined that Zeus was watching their every move at that moment, observing if Prometheus took the right decision to protect the gods.
“Stay!” George nearly looked offended as Dream announced their department.
All the doubts and pressuring voices left Dream’s mind as George’s voice filled their ears. Pleading, brown eyes met calming forest-green ones and they seemingly held a conversation just by looking at each other.
Dream wanted to make a rational decision. They wanted to weigh the pros and cons and they needed to find a reason why they would throw all their principles overboard.
But one look in George’s eyes was enough. Dream’s eyes roamed around the human’s features, checking if all the things they had found so magical when they first laid eyes on the brunet were still as wonderful. They were.
“Please, I can’t let you go when it is in the middle of the night. I would never allow myself to rest.”
George held out a hand to Dream. And really, the god had no other option than to agree to the human’s offer. Not, when he looked at them like this.
Maybe there were too many differences between them. After all, Dream was a god and George was a human. Dream shouldn’t be on earth and George had no other choice but to stay there. And there were many, many secrets between them.
But maybe nothing of that mattered. Not for tonight and not ever. Because where there was love there would be found a solution for every problem. And George and Dream were strong, together.